Android continues climb to the top

ComScore reveals that Android now accounts for nearly one-quarter of the smartphone market

Android continues its steady climb to the top.  Data from comScore measuring the mobile subscriber market between July and October shows that Android now takes 23.5% of the smartphone OS market, up two percentage points since September.   The Android OS has climbed a full 6.5 percentage points compared to July, when it claimed just 17% of the market.

RIM continues to hold the top spot with 35.8% of the market, but Android is quickly chipping away at that lead.  RIM’s market share is down 3.5 percentage points from July, when it accounted for 39.3% of the market.

Apple’s iOS has risen less than one percentage point to take 24.6% of the market, compared to its share in July of 23.8% of the market.  Microsoft also saw a dip, dropping 2.1 percentage points to go home with 9.7% of the mobile OS market, compared to its July share of 11.8%.

As always, the rising star of Android is do, in part, to the fact that the smartphone market on the whole is growing.  Two million became first-time smartphone owners (aw) in October, raising the number of people who own smartphones to 60.7 million, a 14% increase compared to July.  Today, one out of every four mobile subscribers owns a smartphone.  And data from Nielsen has shown that most first-time smartphone owners are getting Android devices.

As the smartphone market continues to grow, more people are engaging with smartphone features than ever before.  Browser usage was up 2.6%, app downloading was up 2.3%, and accessing social networking sites or blogs was up 2.4%.  Texting has also risen 2.1%.

Which device manufacturers are people turning to for their phones?  Samsung continues to be the preferred manufacturer in the mobile market, with a market share of 24.2%, up 1.1 percentage points from July, when it claimed 23.1% of the market.  Most other manufacturers have kept relatively level with where they were in July, with LG taking 21% of the market, RIM claiming 9.3% of the market, and Nokia taking 7.1%.  Motorola saw the biggest loss, dropping 2.1 percentage points to 17.7%, compared to its July standing of 19.8%.

As of October, 234 million Americans aged 13 and older owned a mobile device.

Image source: androidauthority.com